Responding to Climate Emergency: Design, Planning and Assessment of the Built Environment—2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

Despite recently increased climate pledges and targets, continuing our current mitigation efforts and policies is estimated to limit global warming temperatures to 3 °C. Urgent and drastic action is therefore needed to improve our response to climate emergencies. The built environment, being a significant contributor to global energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, is central to establishing a liveable, equitable, and sustainable future. This Special Issue aims to showcase recent innovations in climate-orientated design, planning, assessment, and policy in the built environment. We invite manuscripts that provide the evidence, processes, methodologies, tools, and technologies for creating healthy, resilient, and thriving cities, neighbourhoods, and buildings. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Climate change mitigation and adaptation in the built environment;
• Heat vulnerability/risk planning, assessment, and policy for cities;
• Resilience planning, policy, and design for extreme weather events;
• Urban ecosystems and green infrastructure in cities;
• Advanced cooling materials and technologies for heat mitigation;
• Climate-adaptive building design and regulations;
• Evaluation of the environmental, social, and economic impacts of urban overheating;
• Human and planetary health in urban planning and development;
• Water-sensitive urban and building design;
• Low and net-zero carbon building design and implementation;
• Life cycle assessments and circularity in the built environment;
• Data-driven smart buildings and communities;
• Smart grids and renewable energy systems for decarbonising the built environment;
• Regenerative design and development;
• Nature-positive and nature-based solutions in the built environment.

Prof. Dr. Deo Prasad
Dr. Lan Ding
Dr. William Craft
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• climate change mitigation and adaptation
• heat vulnerability
• green infrastructure
• cool materials and technologies
• climate-adaptive building design
• urban overheating
• water-sensitive urban and building design
• net-zero carbon buildings
• life cycle assessment
• circularity in the built environment
• smart buildings and communities
• regenerative development
• nature-positive

• Responding to Climate Emergency: Design, Planning and Assessment of the Built Environment in Sustainability (14 articles)